Saving the World One Deal at a Time

For a long time, I assumed that the mobile Internet was going to become the Next Big Thing as smartphones with 3g Internet connectivity proliferated.  On my Blackberry, I used to spend a fair amount of time on ugly, WAP-enabled sites that had spartan functionality.  Eventually, I thought, whether using the WAP protocol or not, mobile Internet browsing would be as ubiquitous as desktop browsing.

Not anymore.  With my iPhone, I get my news via apps from Bloomberg and NY Times.  The apps provide a dramatically better experience of consuming digital media on a smartphone.  I still think within a few years most people will have a smartphone with high-speed Internet.  But apps crush the mobile Internet browser.  I think apps from the iPhone and iPod Touch will end up dominating, but even if market share is dispersed between multiple smartphone platforms, I’m convinced apps will rule the day.

There are many things to figure out in this emerging ecosystem.  Do apps lose allure since they aren’t hyperlinked to the World Wide Web?  A little, but I’m sure smart engineers will figure out ways to have rich apps that integrate with other apps.  How will apps make money?  Like anyone else, I would say through a combination of pay-per-download, subscription, and ads.  But I don’t know enough at this point to get more specific than that.

It’s early days in apps monetization, but I’d wager many fortunes will be made as the platform matures.

As I’ve written previously, options are critical in negotiations.  In any negotiation, both sides should brainstorm options to probe for outcomes that create mutual benefit.

I was recently negotiating a fee structure with a prospective client that was composed of two parts.  They were having a hard time stomaching one of the parts.  It was very small compared to the other part, but even though it was small we didn’t want to compromise on what we considered was a  ‘market’ price for that part.  After many rounds of back-and-forth, I asked the prospect if there was any dollar amount that would suffice.  They suggested a number, let’s call it x, that was less than what we wanted.  But we would have taken it if we had to.  Then, an idea occurred to me that I thought could create a win-win.  I said that we would take x, but we would prefer that they pay 1.33x but give us half and give the other half to charity.  I’m sure they were shocked to hear the word ‘charity’ coming from an ibanker, and even more stunned to hear us volunteering to take a lower fee, but they thought it was a great idea and enthusiastically agreed to it.

With the tax deduction they’ll get on the donation, they will end up paying about x overall.  So at little net cost to them, they’ll be able to make a large contribution to a deserving charity.  We both feel good about that, and that will surely strengthen our working relationship.  That alone is worth us forgoing part of the fee, and probably worth much more than that.  More importantly, we were able to cause a charity to get a substantial donation that they otherwise would not have received.